


looking for a way to break in

by finalizer



Category: Villains Series - V. E. Schwab
Genre: 10 Things, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, character/relationship study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-21 11:53:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21299027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finalizer/pseuds/finalizer
Summary: Ten things Mitch Turner learned about Victor Vale.
Relationships: Mitchell "Mitch" Turner/Victor Vale
Comments: 37
Kudos: 107





	looking for a way to break in

**Author's Note:**

> big thanks to [zuz](https://twitter.com/loneIyside) for looking over my grammar & to [kat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/humanveil/pseuds/humanveil) for offering her expertise and not letting me give up on this monstrosity even as i broke down and rewrote the entirety twice to make it as perfect as possible

**_one_** | nine years ago, Wrighton Penitentiary

He didn't like to be touched.

Personal space didn't exist in prison, not for lack of wanting. There was always a hard pat on the back, a shove too rough to be friendly, a fight breaking out of nowhere.

Victor never flinched. He just pushed back harder—not with his hands, but with that cruel hum inside him. He made a name for himself, cultivated a reputation, built up a wall, a fortress, until everyone shied away on instinct.

Mitch was an exception for reasons Victor never disclosed. The chasm between them was smaller than that between Victor and the other inmates—their fingers brushed with the passing of an interesting book, an apple in the cafeteria, a contraband cigarette, and Victor didn't mind. Mitch liked that, being singled out, considered special by someone so remarkable.

He found himself observing Victor, out of curiosity and something else entirely, a flutter in his chest that he couldn't quite put a name to. Watching him, it didn't seem as though Victor was particularly perturbed by contact; more so that he’d gotten so used to the lack of it that it jarred him to be reminded that a world outside of his bubble existed. It warmed something in the pit of Mitch’s stomach to know that his own presence seemed to put Victor at ease rather than disquiet him.

It was different when the lights went out.

Waking Victor from his nightmares was a painful habit, but one Mitch couldn't quite shake; it always ended with agony rocketing like electricity through his bones, his muscles, every inch of him; his knees hitting the concrete with a crack as he stumbled to the floor. Afterwards, Victor always snapped at him, tiredly, halfheartedly at best, for being foolish. _What if I’d lost control? What if I’d killed you? Don't do that again._

Mitch did it again.

Nightmares were commonplace in prison. Even the most hardened of criminals, those with blood on their hands and bodies in their wake, had the kind of skeletons in their closets that surfaced when the sun went down. Over the years, Mitch had gotten used to the echoing moans and groans, the occasional shouts and drawn-out wails that broke the silence.

In that way, Victor was no different. His breathing grew ragged. His fingers twisted into the threadbare sheets, tugging at them like he could pull himself back to reality by force. His quiet distress made way for wordless pleas, broken whimpers that caught in his throat. He begged the darkness to _stop_ but it stubbornly refused to listen. Everything about him was coiled with a silent, unspeakable pain. He never woke up screaming, but it was a near thing.

When it escalated, Mitch found that tuning it out and going back to sleep was impossible; those were the nights he simply couldn't stand. Victor’s shaky gasps took on a new desperation, turned into choked sobs, and then he was hyperventilating, curling in on himself like a frightened child, like it would shield him from the horrors.

It twisted Mitch's insides, laying flat on his cot with his eyes glued to the ceiling, unable to do anything about the hurt in Victor’s voice, the tension rippling through him. All that was left was to cross the cell in a single, determined stride and yank him awake. Through months of acutely painful practice, Mitch learned that that was exactly what Victor needed—a jolt. Calling his name was useless. Tentative poking and prodding did nothing. Mitch had to grab at him, shake his shoulders, drag him awake in the most literal sense possible.

And when Victor snapped upright—knees drawn frantically to his chest, fingers clawing at the bedcovers, eyes wide and unseeing—panic washed over his expression and all Mitch knew was the immediate crackling, blinding pain.

He forced the words out through gritted teeth—“Wake up, Vic. Wake _up_.”—and it wasn't until Victor’s head snapped to the side, until recognition flashed through him, that Mitch could breathe again.

Each time it felt like hours before Victor blinked away the absent, haunted look in his eyes. His breathing slowly evened but he couldn't get his hands to stop shaking. After that, his reprimand always came, and Mitch liked to beat him to the chase.

“I know,” he said, before Victor got the words out.

Victor fixed him with a tired smile.

“Stupid.”

There was a fondness to it. It sounded like _thank you._

“Anytime.”

Small talk, or whatever the technical term was for the conversation to be had upon waking one’s cellmate from a recurring nightmare, wasn't in their repertoire. Mitch stood wordlessly and returned to his cot. He felt the urge, a magnetism almost impossible to resist, to turn back to look at Victor once more, but he resolutely ignored it. He crawled back beneath his covers and turned to face the wall.

The mattress creaked beneath Victor as he tried and failed to get comfortable. Mitch didn't have to look to know the routine—Victor leaning back and tipping his head against the wall or settling gingerly against his pillow, consumed with exhaustion yet restless, jittery. Mitch could picture him running his long, thin fingers through his hair, breathing in, breathing out, trying to calm his racing heart. They both knew he wasn't going to sleep again. He would stay awake until morning watching the shadows dance over the dingy concrete walls.

He never talked about any of it and Mitch never asked. He didn't think he wanted to know the answers, didn't want to know what it was that Victor saw in the dark when he closed his eyes.

**_two_** | six and a half years ago, a hotel in Merit

He was hollow inside.

It was a melodramatic, hyperbolic notion, but Mitch didn't know how else to describe the way Victor interacted with the world, as though the people around him were props, puzzles to solve, chess pieces he could move around the board.

Mitch watched him closely now as he skimmed through the dossiers on Eli’s victims, his head bent low as he pored over the profiles.

He didn't pretend to understand Victor’s mind. As close as they were, in terms of geographical proximity at the very least, Mitch was still an outsider looking in. The best he could do was formulate a series of educated guesses based on years of coexistence.

It’d become addictive: observing the calm, unnerving way Victor moved through life, the controlled way he did things, the measured way he spoke. Mitch liked to entertain the idea that perhaps, in time, he would garner a clear enough understanding of what exactly Victor was.

He wasn't granted the honor of being clued in on the _EO experience_; Victor wasn't particularly keen on discussing it and Mitch, however curious, wasn't the kind of person to pressure anyone into spilling their secrets. And so, it was nothing but guesswork, nothing but Mitch and his tentative conclusions:

With Victor, there were no consequences, no guilt, no shame, no moral compass, nothing of the sort. He acknowledged the existence of such things insofar as Mitch could tell, but carried on like none of it mattered, like _nothing_ mattered outside of what he wanted and what he would do to get it.

After they’d plucked Sydney from the side of the road, after she’d told them the whole truth, Mitch found himself watching her, too. He began to wonder if she felt the same hollowness he associated with Victor.

And she was different, yes. There was undeniably something _other_ about her, something eerily inhuman, but it didn't take long for Mitch to concede that whatever it was was poles apart from whatever was wrong with Victor.

He hadn't known him _before_. There was no way for Mitch to know how Victor had changed after the first time he’d died and come back, which parts of the whole were the new Victor and which had always been there.

He considered that perhaps the emptiness was a constant, that Victor had been born this way: missing things, riddled with gaps. He didn't quite feel things the way others did, if he bothered with feeling anything at all. The night at the lab might have been a catalyst for Victor’s behavior, but it wasn't the source.

Still, there were discrepancies. For all his detachment, Mitch caught glimpses of things Victor said, things he did, that came off as instinctive, unpremeditated attempts at filling the hole in his chest.

Every so often he turned his attention to Mitch, listened to his concerns, asked for his opinions. He worried about Sydney, too: promised to protect her, keep her safe, went out of his way to make her comfortable. It was muscle memory, like he was going through the motions of what felt right, a leftover echo from a past life.

Or, at the very least, that was what it looked like to Mitch. Mitch, who always longed to see the best in people.

Mitch, who longed to consider the impossible option that Victor felt something for him too.

He refused to believe it was all-consuming apathy, and that everything Victor did that wasn't purely for his own benefit was simply to manipulate those around him. He couldn't help but wonder about the dark recesses of Victor’s mind—if somewhere there was a genuine need to feel, to need, to want. Because some part of Victor, despite everything, was still human. He was frayed around the edges, searching for something without even realizing what it was.

And when he was ready, Mitch would help him find it.

He wondered, too, what that said about him, that he’d fallen for someone like that, someone who had no love to give in return.

**_three_** | six years ago, an apartment in Pershing

He had a one track mind.

Mitch had first seen it at Wrighton. Whatever Victor was focused on at any given moment became more important than rising from his cot to stretch his legs or make an overdue trip to the cafeteria. Sometimes it was a book he couldn't tear away from, whether he was reading or vandalizing it, other times he seemed too lost in his thoughts to be bothered to acknowledge anything else.

He never got distracted by the things the other inmates did—the occasional brutal fights, the raunchy magazines, the constant flow of absurd rumors and the intricacies of corrupt prison politics. And it wasn't arrogance, or a sense of pride or entitlement that kept him away. He simply didn't care.

He had a goal. To get out, find Eli and make him pay. In their cell, Victor planned his revenge. Once they were out, he executed it. He had a checklist and he worked his way down. It was the most egregious case of tunnel vision Mitch had ever encountered.

Now, everything revolved around finding a cure.

He would lean back against the headboard of his bed with Mitch’s laptop or sit at the kitchen counter with his tablet in hand, face carefully blank save for the frantic back-and-forth swipe of his eyes over the screen. Victor disappeared completely, devoting all his energy, his time and desperation, to the task at hand. Mitch couldn't blame him—this time, it was his life on the line.

He himself did everything he could to help but even so, the dying and un-dying wasn't a particularly straightforward problem to solve. He did what Victor asked him to with practiced ease, readily offered suggestions and options and potential leads. The false pretense that they were getting somewhere helped, if only to quiet the simmering panic in his gut.

Sometimes, Mitch’s expertise wasn't the kind of help Victor needed. Every now and again, he got so caught up in his work that he forgot to exist. Mitch reminded him—with a cup of coffee, which Victor would automatically reach out for, or dinner, placed in front of Victor as he flicked through a sheaf of documents. He would look up at Mitch with a glimmer of genuine surprise, like he’d forgotten that food was a thing, that anything mattered outside of his current fixation. His brow would crease as he nodded his thanks, like it confused him that anybody cared enough to look after him.

It was either that—a silent singular focus—or it was the opposite. Though Victor would never stoop so low as to let it show, Mitch could see he was afraid.

His frustration at their lack of progress would get the better of him. There was an excess of energy thrumming under his skin and with nowhere to put it, Victor became restless, antsy, agitated. He was bursting at the seams.

He paced, up and down hallways, across rooms, back and forth. He fidgeted, rapped his fingers against any surface within reach: countertops, armrests, his bedcovers, his thighs, the steering wheel whenever they drove, and on and on. He fiddled with whatever he was holding. He twirled anything between his fingers: utensils, his toothbrush, pens and pencils and Sharpies.

It was reflexive. He never realized he was doing it until Mitch snapped at him—kindly but insistently—to stop. And again, because Victor was too preoccupied to pay attention.

Ultimately, Mitch had no choice but to cross the distance between them and pry whatever it was from between Victor’s fingers. He found that he enjoyed that flicker of warm recognition when Victor blinked at him as he floated back down to Earth.

Of all of Mitch’s tactics, the physical contact worked best. Sometimes it was a grounding touch that snapped Victor back to reality, when he stood too still over his unfinished coffee. Or a firm grasp when Mitch caught him clenching his fists so hard his nails left indents on his palms. He unfurled Victor’s fingers so he wouldn't hurt himself, flattened them against the couch cushions with a murmured, “None of that.” He took Victor’s jittery hands in his own until he stilled, ghosted his thumb over the back of Victor’s hand, over his pulse point.

On the surface, it calmed Victor down. On the inside, Mitch could only hope it helped. Victor wasn't one for casual affection, but he seemed comfortable enough around Mitch to let him nudge and poke and touch without thinking twice.

So Mitch held him, provided that small comfort. He took in the scraps of closeness he was allowed. He marveled at how pale Victor’s skin was, how frail and thin his wrists looked wrapped in Mitch’s fingers. He wondered how it was possible that Victor, larger-than-life, could be so fragile.

**_four_** | five years ago, a hotel in Dresden

He was blunt to the point of rudeness.

Mitch considered that a good thing, usually. Victor said what he meant, what he thought, made it clear what he wanted. He didn't skirt around sensitive topics as though a careful, measured approach would somehow wield better results.

It made him all the more interesting, how straightforward he was.

“Why did you stay?” he asked one evening, as Mitch finished washing up after dinner. Mitch looked up and tried to keep his expression neutral. His heart threatened to climb up his throat and he shoved it back down, completed the charade with a nonchalant half-shrug.

“I had nowhere to go. And you had big plans, so.”

He wasn't hiding. He suspected he was an open book and that Victor could read his face, if not his mind, well enough. But he couldn't exactly say outright that he’d caught a bad case of feelings, not when Victor had so many more pressing matters to worry about. He didn't want to be a burden, an unnecessary distraction. The last thing he needed was for Victor’s mind to fixate on yet another unsolvable problem.

The distance hurt, of course. Unrequited feelings stung. But Mitch knew he would rather have this than not have Victor in his life at all.

Victor narrowed his eyes.

“You’re lying.”

Mitch said nothing.

Victor smiled. It was a sharp sort of amusement, but genuine in the way it reached his eyes.

“I can respect that. Can’t trust a man without secrets.”

And Victor had plenty of those.

When he wanted answers he took them, but he never gave any of his own in return. He was direct and to the point when talking about anything but himself.

He didn't divulge details, didn't elaborate on his curt sentences or throwaway lines. He told Mitch only as much as he needed to know to get the job done or to get him to stop fussing and worrying and looking at him like he was on the verge of breaking, a glass teetering at the edge of a table.

What little Mitch did know, he knew in passing—tidbits about Victor’s family or inconsequential anecdotes about Lockland. He knew Victor’s parents were wealthy and famous and that Victor hated them with a passion. It was amusing, the way he refused to even give them the satisfaction of talking about them behind their backs, how he merely frowned on the rare occasions the topic came up. Mitch knew about Angie and Eli, the ups and the downs, the truth of what happened all those years ago, a story told in fragments whenever Victor was drunk or well on his way there—or, at least, a neat version of it; he suspected Victor sanitized the details for his benefit more often than not.

Other things Mitch knew without ever being told. He watched Victor and tucked his discoveries away to be revisited at another time:

He was vain in a strange, effortless way. He read texts on anatomy as though they were gripping novels while the gripping novels he picked up in bookshops he blacked out. He preferred coffee to tea and only ever drank it black. His interest in other people never ventured beyond scientific curiosity. He was charming enough when he wanted to be, when it served a purpose, but preferred to get his point across without dressing it up in sugarcoated bullshit. All in all, he wasn't one for social propriety.

In that way, Victor was always on the offense. He locked down the secrets he didn't want to tell, barricaded himself with spirals of barbed wire to push people away—_physically_, sometimes, using his power to keep them at bay—before they got close enough to ask. Mitch knew Victor would rather never trust anyone than take the plunge and risk being seen for who he truly was.

But Mitch was stubborn too, and he pushed against it.

He never expected it to be easy to chip away at Victor’s fortifications; pathetic as it was, he was sure he’d be willing to wait forever for a hint of reciprocation. It became a slow, ongoing challenge: to melt the ice around Victor’s heart.

In the meantime, he grew oddly fond of Victor’s brusque manner, of both the harsh, evasive words and the brutally honest ones. Mitch didn't mean to _change_ him. He loved Victor’s rude, tactless moments as much as he loved the rare considerate ones. Deterrents became aphrodisiacs. Push became pull. Mitch couldn't tear away from the horrid creature he’d given his heart to.

More than anything, he wanted a chance to peel away the impenetrable layers, scrub off the years of self-made armor and learn what was underneath. To banish Victor’s self-inflicted isolation. To be trusted, completely.

Everything—he wanted everything Victor had to offer.

**_five_** | three and a half years ago, a penthouse in Edgefield

He suffered in silence.

When Victor couldn't hold it back anymore and the waves of pain began to crash down, he ran. He escaped to empty stairwells, basements, hotel rooftops, side streets, back alleys—however far he could push himself, desperate to put as much distance as possible between him and them before he collapsed, so that nobody else got hurt.

But Mitch knew, and he was sure that Sydney did too, that beyond that, Victor simply didn't want them to watch him die.

He visibly hated the way they looked at him, with pity, like he was something to be mended. And so he postured, pretended he was okay, veered away from displays of weakness and struggle as though the two of them didn't know exactly what he was going through.

But the moment he thought they were no longer looking he dropped the act—he would sway, clutch at the wall for balance, sag to the ground, slump onto his bed, deflate like he couldn't even find the strength to remain upright.

The physical pain was one thing, something Victor was intimately acquainted with and had long since grown accustomed to.

Once or twice, Mitch watched it happen, when Victor was too slow to stagger out of the room and Mitch too slow to react. Victor, doubled over in pain, fighting a losing battle—knees buckling, knuckles white, jaw clenched against the agony. He hit the ground, twitched and, when his heart stopped, fell impossibly still. Mitch stared blankly at him, feeling useless. He didn't want to think of the body on the floor as Victor’s corpse, though that was exactly what it was.

The blown bulbs from the overhead fixture left the room dim, the hardwood peppered with broken glass. Mitch felt sick.

Momentarily, he considered hauling Victor onto the couch or sliding a pillow under his head, as though any of that could soften the reality of the situation. He didn’t, because he knew Victor wouldn't appreciate being coddled, even in death.

Time oozed by at a glacial pace. It felt like hours and not minutes before Victor gasped back to life, eyes bleary, confused, _frightened. _He sat up and asked Mitch if he was alright. Mitch nodded numbly. He wasn't the one who’d just died and come back. Victor collected himself, checked his phone, rose to his feet, and carried on like none of it happened.

The psychological pressure was something else entirely. And Victor, difficult as ever, was too proud to admit to needing, _wanting_ their help. Mitch could see him struggling. He hid his deaths well, but his fear less so. The thought of losing control—over his body, his mind, his present and future and everything in between — overwhelmed him. He was terrified of dying. He was running out of lives.

He put on a good show. He played at being level-headed and dispassionate in the face of his looming demise. He suggested extreme solutions, horrific ideas—the kind of what-ifs that made Mitch’s insides churn—with the familiar ease of ordering dinner.

“What about a reset?”

Mitch looked up, eyes wide. “If you mean what I think—”

“A clean shot,” Victor interrupted. “Quick, painless, and Sydney tries again.”

Mitch didn't want to consider that. He didn't want to consider the variables, whether Victor was seriously considering offing himself or, god forbid, asking _him_ to do it, all for the sake of testing a fallible theory.

“You can’t do that to her. If it fails? If you don’t—” Mitch couldn't finish the thought. “She’ll blame herself.”

“Sooner or later, I’ll die anyway.”

His tone was flippant, but Mitch could hear the tremor lurking beneath. He couldn't fathom how Victor kept it all locked away, bottled up, how he went about life acting like he felt none of it, how he kept up the facade in situations that would make even the strongest of people break down in despair.

No help came from any of the EOs they sought out, or the concoctions of drugs Victor still reached for every so often to dull the ache in his nerves. Sometimes Mitch worried those would kill him before the dying did.

Most evenings, he watched Victor sit in the armchair in the far corner of the living room, his eyes glassy and vacant, his shoulders tense. He looked ill, as though the relentless pain was eating him alive. Mitch wished there was something he could do to offer even a few seconds of reprieve.

Talking helped, in theory, but Victor pointedly refused to indulge Mitch whenever he attempted a heart-to-heart. So he poured Victor a drink and babbled on about nothing in particular to diffuse the tension in a manner Victor was more likely to appreciate, instead of telling him all the things he wished he could: That he didn't have to carry his burden alone. That he had help. That he had them.

And Victor always waved him away because Victor was always _fine_.

Mitch watched him and wondered if he ever let the mask slip, if he ever gave into the hurt and let the tears fall behind closed doors. He always resisted the urge to knock. He didn't think he could stomach the truth.

**_six_** | two and a half years ago, on the road

He knew how to love.

Mitch had been wrong, before.

On the inside, Victor was completely, utterly _human—_cold, distant, fucked up in too many ways to list, yet he felt so much, cared so deeply it baffled Mitch that he hadn’t noticed it before.

Mitch had met Victor’s eyes as he left the warehouse, briefly, urgently, and the look on Victor’s face had snapped Mitch’s heart in two. It had been _thank you_ and _I’m sorry_ and _goodbye_ all in one, and Mitch knew, in that instant, that he was never going to see him again.

He’d left knowing full well Victor wouldn't follow, pretending for Sydney’s sake that he’d be there at midnight at the side of the road, torn up and drenched in blood but there nonetheless, that they would carry on together.

Now, Sydney was quiet as the two of them drove through the endless night. Her fingers were curled into Dol’s fur in the backseat like she needed something to hold on to to stop herself from breaking.

Mitch felt it too; it was as though someone had torn a hole through his chest and with every passing moment the chasm grew larger. He fervently wished to pull over and throw up onto the gravel, heave until he felt nothing. Blessedly, blissfully, nothing.

Instead, he wrapped both hands around the steering wheel and timed his breathing, counted the seconds, tried to swallow past the lump in his throat. He was sure Sydney could see through his charade, but he kept it up anyway.

The worst part, Mitch thought, was that Victor was convinced he was doing this to save them. Mitch knew this as well as he knew anything about the man, that Victor thought the distance would somehow make them safe. Stupid, stubborn Victor was determined to continue down his path of destruction and didn't want to drag the people he cared for down with him.

It was warped and complicated, the way Victor saw the world, the way he decided what to care about and what to fling aside. And it seemed this—keeping Mitch and Sydney out of the line of fire—was one of the few things worth making sacrifices for. It was an attempt at making things right.

Mitch remembered the way Victor used to look at them as they sat around the kitchen, a mismatched trio and an undead dog: brow pinched, lips set in a tight line, the discomfort in his gaze reminiscent of unease, of guilt. He’d never known what to make of it. Now, he understood. Victor had known from the start that what he was doing was wrong. He regretted stringing them along, using them, putting them in harm’s way, for as long as he did.

Letting them go was Victor telling them he loved them too, in the only way he knew how. He left to protect them. He left to spare them the inevitable pain of watching him die.

The traffic light ahead blinked to red and Mitch pulled the car to a stop. It was uncomfortably quiet. There was no howling wind, no rain lashing violently against the windshield. It was so different from that other night, the night they'd found Sydney. The empty passenger seat at Mitch’s side felt like a yawning void.

He squeezed his eyes shut to fight the building nausea and, in the dark, saw Victor’s trembling hands, his long fingers, the blue veins jutting out from under tired, pale skin. The gaunt hollows of his cheeks, the sharp angles, the dark rings beneath sunken eyes. The exhaustion draining him, undoing him, bit by bit. He saw a flash of Victor at the warehouse, weary, broken, grateful, unable to say goodbye, and Mitch loved him more than anything but knew he had to let him go—

“Are you okay?”

Sydney’s small voice rang out from the backseat, concerned. Mitch blinked. He was unsurprised to find he was shaking. His chest felt tight. Tears pricked at his eyes, hot and unavoidable.

“No,” he said, truthfully. She’d been lied to enough.

The light turned green and Mitch viciously smothered the screaming voice in the back of his mind that begged him to turn the car around.

He took a breath and drove on.

**_seven_** | a year and four months ago, a house outside of Merit

He couldn't stand to be alone.

The Victor that sat at the kitchen bar wasn't the same man who’d left them all those months ago. While then-Victor cherished his own company, now-Victor craved outside comfort with a fervent desperation.

It was too quiet, he said, without the accursed buzz in his head.

He didn't mind the solitude, per se. What he really sought was steady reassurance, a lingering nearby presence, the warm reminder that he had someone to turn to. Even from a distance, Mitch knew Victor could feel them in the house—him and Sydney and Dol—like a hum under his skin, and that it grounded him, kept him sane. Now-Victor was faced with the challenge of relearning how to exist without death looming over him like a merciless guillotine.

A few weeks ago, an unexpected knock had cut through the early morning silence. Mitch couldn't scrub the memory from his mind:

Victor, dead on his feet at the door with dark circles the color of asphalt and a blueish sheen to his translucent skin. With shaking hands at his sides and a weak smile on his lips. Gone one moment and back the next, slipping past Mitch and stepping inside like he belonged there. Claiming to have one last idea, a very stupid one, but nothing left to lose. Haverty’s serum had run out. His luck, his lives had run out.

Mitch, reluctantly, had gone along with it. It was something he would never forgive Victor for making him do. For making Sydney do.

But it’d worked.

And Mitch swore to himself that this time he wasn't going to let Victor out of his sight. It’d been the worst form of torture, the past year: days turned to weeks turned to months, not knowing where Victor was or if he was still alive.

So Mitch latched on and refused to ever let go.

He confessed, driven by the notion that he could lose Victor again and never get another chance. He told Victor the whole truth: that he needed him too, far more desperately than Victor needed them. He bared his heart. He tried not to sound too hopeful. He promised Victor he would do anything for him to trust, to open up, to _stay_.

Later, Victor kissed him back, though the doubt ran rampant behind his eyes.

Because Victor didn't understand how Mitch could love him.

But he stayed—sat around, small in overlarge t-shirts with his hair falling over his forehead, confused and exhausted and damaged, struggling to get better.

It was the sort of shift that was never easy. Victor had grown so used to looking over his shoulder, waiting to collapse again, and then that rug had been tugged from underneath him, that sick reality uprooted, and he was suddenly forced to remember what life was like without the obsession and the suffering.

He put on a brave face and did his best to play the part of a man reborn. But Mitch could see the cracks in the plaster even when Victor kept his mask firmly on. He saw glimmers of vulnerability, glimpses into what Victor was feeling beneath the painted-on visage. Even so, he couldn't quite tell if it was all real or imagined; if he was seeing what he wanted to, or if Victor was slowly letting little things slip, wanting Mitch to catch them, if this was truly Victor reaching out and finally asking for help.

Mitch wished he could brush the pain away as easily as one would errant teardrops, but he knew that, above all, Victor needed time to adjust.

He was new to this—carving himself open wide enough to let someone in, and learning to trust them in turn.

The lines between them, between what was friendship and what was something more, had blurred for so long—Mitch’s feelings burning white-hot for years and Victor’s muddled, still struggling to make themselves known. But with every sunrise, every sunset, everything in between, Mitch could see that Victor was warming up to the idea of being loved.

It wasn’t easy. However much Victor’s heart yearned for _this_, whatever it was, it was his mind that threw obstacles onto his path.

The stagnation was difficult—the stillness that came with spending day after day in the same house, on the same street. It was unnatural to stay put after so long on the run. It was claustrophobic to be confined again after ten years in prison. It was daunting to call it home.

Sydney had chosen it a few months back, pointed to the online listing and demanded Mitch look no further. She’d set aside a room for Victor the day they’d moved in, believing fiercely that one day he would come back.

At the time, Mitch had wished he had even a scrap of her optimism. Now, he wished he’d had her _foresight_. Victor was with them, finally here, not for lack of options but because he wanted to be.

It was complicated and tentative, relearning to coexist, but it was good. It was the first thing, the _only_ thing, in so many years that felt right. For the first time in forever, Mitch didn't feel his curse looming over everything, threatening to shatter the delicate balance. It was like pieces slotting perfectly into place, a scattered puzzle being put back together.

**_eight_** | eleven months ago, the same house

He was fractured.

For all his pretenses of being immaculately put together, Victor was falling apart.

The truth was this: Mitch had never really known Victor, not the version of him that was just _him_. He’d known the Victor that chased greedily, blindly after something, but not the one who had no choice but to live in the moment. Victor _before_—before his return to them, his second resurrection at Sydney’s hands—had a goal. Victor _after_ had nothing. When the dust settled and he was finally allowed to rest, he seemed lost. Uncertain and hollow, astray without direction, unraveling in the silence.

With all his distractions gone, the weight of the world caught up with him. Mitch sensed the energy thrumming under Victor’s skin, like it was screaming at him to _run_, and he could see Victor fighting to stay still because there was nowhere to run to anymore. He knew Victor hadn't planned anything past that night in the Falcon Price building. Every day that followed was a day Victor hadn't expected to see. Everything was an unknown. It was an equation he couldn't solve. And there was nothing Victor hated more than not knowing, not being in control.

The restlessness doubled and tripled and took over. With nothing to occupy Victor’s thoughts, he spiraled. He looked for ways to escape the nothingness. He steadily lost his grip—he trembled, struggled for breath—and when the silence refused to budge he turned his nerves up, _up, up, up_, to the point of agony, breaking, shattering, just to remind himself that he was real, that he could feel.

Mitch couldn't take it—Victor buckling under the strain of his own power, dropping to his knees, gasping in the throes of blind panic. He always approached him slowly, held Victor’s shaking hands in his own, snapped at him to never do that again, to never hurt himself like that. There were other ways to wake up. Victor nodded, promised.

Then he did it again.

And again and again, when he assumed Mitch wasn't around to see him self-destruct.

He would sit out on the balcony, in the cold, without a care for himself. He lost time. He lost weight. He gave it his best effort, to just _exist_, but the emptiness grew and Mitch felt Victor’s uneasiness grow with it.

The nightmares got worse. Victor’s mind made up for the constant numbness by torturing him when the sky faded to black.

Mitch never held him, never touched him when he slept. Victor still didn't trust himself not to lose control; he didn’t want to hurt Mitch when he did. But he was always there when Victor snapped upright in a cold sweat, curling in on himself and grasping at the sheets. He muttered reassuring nothings until Victor calmed down and remembered to breathe. He intertwined their fingers and pulled Victor close, if only for a moment.

The first time Victor fell asleep in Mitch’s arms followed the worst night he’d ever had.

He begged incessantly, brokenly for the horrors to stop, _please stop, _but they wouldn’t. He contorted with invisible pain, twisted and kicked and buried his face against his pillow like it would make it all go away. When Mitch reached over to rouse him, Victor lurched upright with a sharp cry, shivering, heaving, hysterical. He was unable to stop the tears streaming down his face, to choke down the sobs that wracked his shoulders. He seemed too drained to even try. It was the most helpless, the most terrified Mitch had ever seen him.

It took an hour for Victor to force enough air into his lungs, for his body to cooperate and his tears to subside. Mitch held him until the darkness swept over once more.

When Victor woke again the next morning, with red-rimmed eyes and his voice hoarse, he told Mitch he couldn't remember what the dream had been about. Mitch read in between the lines, understood that whatever it had been, Victor simply couldn't bear to repeat it aloud.

From there on out, the proximity became a blessing rather than a threat, a grounding comfort to remind Victor that he was never going to be alone again. That he didn't have to face anything on his own, that Mitch would be there every step of the way. He slept poorly, but better with Mitch warm against his back. Better, with someone to cling to, someone to keep him safe and keep him whole.

He was stretched thin. Hollowed out. And despite it all Mitch was as infatuated as ever, drawn in like a moth to a flame. With every passing day Victor looked more and more his age, the exhaustion etched into the lines of his face, and with every passing day Mitch swore he somehow loved him more.

It took twice as long to undo damage as it did to cause it. Mitch knew this. Victor knew this. Life had taken its toll and made damn sure to make it as hard as possible for Victor to put himself back together again. But beneath the wreckage there was still that spark—that greedy, spiteful determination to survive—that made him what he was. Mitch saw that, clear as day, and he knew that Victor would fight.

**_nine_** | three months ago, a cafe in downtown Merit

He was trying.

Mitch had never doubted that Victor was capable of putting in the effort, but it was something else entirely to watch it play out. Deciding to stay, to commit to _family_, required Victor to rework everything about himself, to shift all his molecules around to accommodate the new people in his life.

It was never going to be a walk in the park. He’d never been the sort to enjoy the company of others, to breeze through life smiling pleasantly and making friends. It was slow progress, learning to live with limitations, but Victor persisted.

Some things were instincts, things he’d always done around them without thinking twice—three plates at dinner, hot cocoa for Sydney, a fresh bowl of water for the dog—things that seemed inconsequential but meant everything. Meant that Victor, at least deep down, was aware that world did not revolve around him.

Other things were new. He made a conscious effort to spend time with Sydney on her terms: watching her shows, reading her books, going over her schoolwork, teaching her increasingly complicated card games or discussing the sort of morbid fun facts that had Mitch running from the room. She’d grown up in his absence, changed enough for Victor to have to relearn her, figure out how to deal with a moody adolescent rather than a pouting child.

He was overbearing at times, enough for Mitch to have to pull him aside and tell him just that.

“You know that’s just gonna piss her off.”

Victor blinked at him. “I didn't know that.” He paused, swallowed thickly and said in a quiet, raw tone of voice that took Mitch by surprise: “I need you to tell me things like that, Mitch.”

He studied them intensely like he only had one shot at getting things right, like he’d be banished otherwise.

He asked Mitch questions to make up for all the years of one-sided silence, and listened attentively to the answers. It was strange to realize Victor had never done that before, never tried to get to know Mitch the way Mitch had tried to learn him.

He hesitantly divulged the sort of details about himself that he’d never bothered to speak aloud until now, insignificant tidbits that Mitch cherished more than anything. He was fond of classical music. Terrible at sports. Superhero movies annoyed him. He regretted never finishing medical school. He didn't have a favorite color or favorite food. His family most certainly _did not_ own a yacht.

Now, they sat in a worn, red leather booth in a vintage diner. Sydney had demanded an early birthday present in the form of a classic banana split and Mitch had scoured Yelp for the very best Merit had to offer. He’d ordered a cappuccino for himself and stopped Victor from doing the same. He was jittery enough as it was without a third cup of coffee before noon. Mitch had gotten him a single scoop of chocolate instead and Victor had scowled at him for the sake of being disagreeable.

“Well, no,” Victor was saying to Sydney. They sat side by side, with Mitch across the checkered table. “The temperature in the room has to be regulated.”

Mitch had zoned out the moment their conversation had gone from general anatomical knowledge to forensic pathology or whatever the horror topic of the day was, but Sydney’s eyes were bright and Victor was in his element, so who was he to judge and interrupt their fun.

With every little thing Victor did, Mitch could see how hard he was fighting with himself to be good. He reconstructed right and wrong from memory, from when he was only human, to make sure nobody got hurt. For someone like Victor, that kind of effort was monumental. And it was all for them.

“You’ve done bad things, but you’re not a bad person,” Victor had said to him once, a few weeks after he’d come back. “You’re—good. I’m not. And I don’t care. That’s the difference between us.”

Mitch hadn't responded at the time. He’d sipped his whiskey and absently run his thumb over the back of Victor’s hand as he’d listened to him talk.

It’d been another deflection, another lie, one Victor himself probably hadn't realized he was telling. He _did_ care. He tried every day, without fail, to be better. At times, Victor left his comfort zone so far behind Mitch couldn't quite believe the man before him was the same one he’d met in a prison cell all those years ago, the same one who’d stood over the bloodied body of a cop with a smoking gun in his hand and no remorse in his eyes.

When Mitch had nightmares—because he did: flashes of horrid memories, of blood and burning bodies, of his finger on the trigger—Victor, cold and callous Victor, made it better. He woke Mitch with gentle touches and comforted him with hushed whispers. _You’re okay. I’m right here. Baby, I’m not going anywhere_. He held him close and kept him safe, made everything okay. He went against his very nature in those moments, something destructive becoming healing.

When tensions grew, he still struggled with the overwhelming need to level everything in his path, but always restrained himself before he lost control. Instead of flinging his glass against the wall and giving into the visceral desire to lash out, he turned the ruinous energy—the anger, the pain, _everything_—inward, grounding the current and hurting himself instead. It wasn't ideal, Mitch hated it, but Victor had no intention of hurting _them_ ever again. He would rather destroy himself than give in, than not care. It overshadowed everything—the need to tuck himself neatly into their picturesque life, to keep them together and create the kind of family he’d never had.

**_ten_** | last night, home

He wanted to be wanted.

It was a gradual thing, tentative and hesitant, that in time bloomed and blossomed and spread like greedy, writhing vines over everything.

It was heavy gazes and lingering touches, chaste kisses growing insistent, heated, Victor’s pulse beneath his lips, his fingers pressing hard into Victor’s skin.

Mitch sat at the edge of the bed, shrouded in twilight, his head tilted up. Victor stood between his legs and angled his chin up for a kiss, those impossible fingers warm against his throat. Mitch’s palms dragged over Victor’s hips to keep him steady, keep him still like he might vanish again at any moment, melt into the shadows, never to return. Because it seemed impossible, Mitch thought as Victor kissed him deeper, sighed against his lips, that he had this, that a pipe dream could become a reality, that Victor wanted him too.

The first time, the second, the fifth, everything about Victor had been cautious in a way Mitch could hardly recognize. He’d offered an admission once, months ago when Mitch’s fingers were deftly undoing the buttons of Victor’s shirt; a simple, concise, “You think about sex. I don’t.” But he’d wanted to try. And he’d found something he liked in the overwhelming closeness he’d never known before, the warmth he had to ease himself into, and Mitch poured everything he had into multiplying that feeling. He tried to be as open, as sincere as he could possibly be, and he could see Victor trying, _wanting_, to match that honesty.

He’d run his hands over Mitch’s tattoos, fascinated, _obsessed_, fingertips ghosting softy across the ink like he was afraid he might smudge it, like he was trying desperately to memorize it all. Mitch could see, could feel, that the part of Victor that shied away from, that abhorred vulnerability was at war with the need to let himself have this, to let himself open up, lay himself bare, to be touched and held and taken care of.

Mitch gave him time—he would have given him all the time in the world if he’d had to—to trust. It didn't matter what they did or if they did it, because it was Victor. Victor, for whom Mitch felt _everything_, so many indescribable, nameless feelings he could never put into words. Victor, who made everything perfect.

Slowly, bit by bit, Victor allowed himself to unwind—he pressed closer like he couldn't get close enough, kissed deeper like he could melt into it, trembled and gasped as his back arched and he gave into feeling _too much_, as he let go as thoroughly as he possibly could. He wanted Mitch and he wanted Mitch to have him in turn, he wanted to give all of himself, to love Mitch back as completely as he could possibly love anyone.

He let him in, closer than he’d ever let anyone; he learned to read what Mitch liked, what he himself did, what he couldn't stand and what he couldn't live without. Mitch touched him gently, met his lips over and over like the simple gesture could convey everything words couldn't. He led the way when Victor needed him to, fucked him like he could pour a decade of longing into a single night. He brushed his hair back, soft and white in the moonlight, kissed his neck, kissed the blush spreading over his chest. He wanted Victor to feel revered, worshipped, through the press of his mouth, the roll of his hips, his fingers against Victor’s throat, his ribs, his waist.

Mitch could see that Victor needed it, needed it so much, to trust in this thing between them, to crack himself open and allow it in, the unbridled devotion, undivided attention, from somebody who loved him so entirely, adored and desired every last wretched part of him.

And nothing compared to the sight of Victor afterwards—breathless, smiling, content, his head pillowed on Mitch’s chest, so thoroughly exhausted he slept through the night.

Mitch wished for it to last forever, this impossible dream:

It was open-mouthed kisses over Victor’s spine, the backs of his thighs, over his stomach, over all the scars marring the pale expanse of skin; the affection overwhelming, Victor gritting his teeth against the sounds he couldn't hold back, the tears that threatened to spill. It was exaltation, adoration, it was sloppy and filthy, it was perfect, it was _everything_. It was a rush, like pushing miles over the speed limit, like dying and coming back, a weightless fall, tumbling over the edge of a cliff. It was coming apart.

And it was put being back together again.

**Author's Note:**

> _this is not a love story, but love is in it._  
_that is, love is just outside it,_  
_looking for a way to break in._  
— jeanette winterson, lighthousekeeping  
  
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